The various uses of the Prologue in the passages referred to, led even Volkmar to declare that ' th6 prologue of John is the primordial revelation ol the Logos in its immediate majesty, and that thf
JOHN, GOSPEL OF
JOHN, GOSPEL OF
69:
writings of Justin are the first attempts at a rational analysis of the contents of the revelation.' Other and later writers derived these great truths from the Prologue of St. John's Gospel ; why should not Ju.stin be allowed to have done the same?'
AUirecht Thoma (Die Genesis des Joh. Evnng. p. 824) has endeavoured to show that Justin found his idea of the Lo^os in Philo Judaeus, and that he derived nothing from the Gospel, unless it be the identifieation of Jesus with the incarnation of the Logos. Hut the objection to this buggestion is, that while the Logos of Philo re- ceives many striking designations, such as ' High Priest,' 'Son,' 'First-Begotten,' etc., Philo never hints at the Messianic idea or the Incarnation. Nothing could be less like the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ than the Philonic God who, by His Xi7oi, 'eternal reason,' created or sustains the uni- verse (see Reynolds' introd. to Go.spel of John in Pulpit Comm. p. xxviii).
[B] What indications do we find of the existence of the Fourth Gospel between the latest date of Justin and that of the literary activity of Irensus?
(1) Heraci.EON is referred to by Irenaius and Hippolytus, by Clemens Alex., and above all by Origen, as a di«ciple of Valentinus, the great Gnostic of the middle of the century. He is probably referred to by Irenieus as one of the unnamed Gnos- tics who, with Ptolema>us, helped to divide the Valentinians into two groups {lief. Hcer. ii. 4, vi. 35. 29), differing on tlie question whether the original princii)le of the universe was a monad or a dyad. He did not write a formal exjiosition of Valentinus, but a practical exegesis of the Gospels of Luke and John, in which the doctrines of Valen- tinus were assumed. He writes with extreme reverence for the text of the Gospels, as if they commanded attention on the highest ground. He is one of the earliest to write a commentary on any book of the NT ; and from his commentary on the Fourth Gospel, Origen cjuotes 50 times in his own comm., sometimes accepting Heracleon's views, more frequently contradicting them. Large ex- tracts from the comments on the first, second, fourth, and eighth chapters are thus preserved by Origen (see ' Heracleon ' m Diet. Christ. Jiioq. by Sal- mon). Tlie method of comment is allegorical ; and while the historical or natural sense is not rejected, the higher and truer meaning is found in forced analogies. But the jioint of interest here is, that before Irenaeus, and reaching back by Heracleon's personal relations with the celebrated heresiarch to Valentinus himself, this Gospel was esteemed as of prime importance and authority in the view of heretics as well as orthodox. That Justin should not have known this document, becomes almost Incredible.
(2) This conclusion grows more certain when we eonipare with it the testimony of Justin's pupil, 'rATlAN,who between A.D.ieOand ITOis-sued \\\s Dis- etntrse to the Greeks, in which explicit citjitions are made from Jn I*', and also from Jn 1' 4'-'*.t After the death of Justin, Tatian held and propagated cer- tain heterodox opinions on the subject of nuirriage, which he regardeil as ' corruption and whoredom. He repudiated the OT as the record of the Demiurge, in consequence of its implied sanction of polygamy. Kuseoius reports that Tatian was the founder of the sect of Kncratites. All that
* Kirchhofer {QufUentammlun^) nnd Ch&rt«rts {Cantmicit^) quoto 11 larKO number of other ptu^oKi't from both tlio Apol. ana Dial, whicti rt- veal )(rc&t«r or IcM r«MmbUiic« to poasaipefl trura •Terr part of the (Johjh'I.
f See l■^lller'■ moHt i'labormt« dlsMrtation In Diet, iif Christ. Biog.. as well a« that of Donaldton (//ul. oj Ch Deri, and Lit. vol. lit. pp. \-4S0X Hoth theHo writ^-m riirefutly analyze the 'Diacourae' and ■ummarize Ita teat-hlngn; Fuller irives the nmarkable paaaage tn which the Fourth tloapel la quoted.
Irena;us states is that Encratites appear to ba> e appealed to Tatian, as holding that Adam could not be saved, seeing that ' in Adam all die.' Euse- bius (HE iv. 20) refers to a much more imptrtant work of Tatian's, which was a patch-work cf the evangelia, compiled after a fashion he did not understand, and called t6 Sii. Teaaipuv.' This docu- ment, said Eus., 'is in the possession of some even now.' This passing observation is the first extant reference to the Diatessaron, on which much additional light has been thrown in recent times by unexpected discoveries, and by documents the importance of which had been long overlooked. This is not the place to tell the romantic story of the several steps by which the Diatessaron to which Eu.sebius referred has come into our hands. We are amazed at the tenuity and tenacity of the thread of proof on which the conclusion rests that we have before us the interweavin" of four distinct Gospels and no others by Tatian.and dating near the middle of the 2nd cent. Seeing that this conclusion carries with it the early and wide circulation at that date of the Fourth Gospel, it naturally excites keen criticism (see Nineteenth Century, April 1895). The .second reference in Greek antiquity is that of Theodoret (//fcr. i. 20), Bp. of Cyrus or Cyrrhus in E. Syria (457-8), who attributes the Diatess. to Tatian, but condemns it for the omis- sion of the genealogies and the rejection of the evidence that Christ, according to the flesh, was born of the seed of David. Theodoret states that more than 2U0 copies of this work were found in his little diocese, and that he substituted for them copies of the Four Gospels (see calculations based on this fact in Norton s Genuineness of Gospels, ch. 1, touching the extensive distribution of Scrip- ture in the 5th cent.). It appears from this that the Harmony was in all probability written in Syr., which would explain Eusebius' ignorance of its contents. This (as Fuller urges) may account for the blunder made towards the close of the fourth century by Epiphanius (Ilier. 40), who had got the idea that this document was none other than the 'Gospel according to the Hebrews.' Evidently, neither Eusebius nor Epiphanius had any definite information or actual knowledge of Syr. litera- ture. But Victor, Bp. of Capua (d. A.D. 554 1, came into possession of a codex of NT containing an anonymous harmony of the four Gospels, whit-h he called Dinpente, and which he was disposed to identify with a 'harmony' made from that of Ammonias of Alexandria, or from that to which Eusebius referred as constructed by Tatian. That which Victor published was a reiasion in tenns of Jerome's Vulg., and is one of the earliest and most valuable MSS of the Vulgate. This codex of the NT Vulg. was conveyed by Boniface to Fulda, and has had bestowed upon it the name t'ulden.sis. As far as the Gospels are concerned, it is practically identical with tlie Arab. VS of Tatian's IJiates-saron which has subsequently come to light. Unlike the description of Tatian's Diat., it commences with Lk 1'"* and contains portions of genealogies which Tatian's did not. These are found to bo alterations of the original text, by a careful comparison of the index with the MS. This Latin codex was trans- lated into the Ohi Saxon dialect in alliterative verse under the name H^liand. Another link of interest is the discovery of the Homilies of .■\jilirantes, bishop and ahlwt of a convent near Mosul (A.I). ;t,'U)-345). They were written in Syr., anil give lengthened extracts from the Diatessaron. Another interesting fnignienl is a treatise, tli'' Doctrine of Addai, which contains the cnriou.s Syi .